The Irish are a northwest European ethnic group who originated in Ireland. People of Irish ethnicity outside of Ireland are common in many western, especially commonwealth and North American, countries.
From as far back as the 16th century, historians taught that the Irish are the descendants of the Celts, an Iron Age people who originated in the middle of Europe and invaded Ireland somewhere between 1000 B.C. and 500 B.C.
Who Are the Closest Genetic Relatives of the Irish? Today, people living in the north of Spain in the region known as the Basque Country share many DNA traits with the Irish. However, the Irish also share their DNA to a large extent with the people of Britain, especially the Scottish and Welsh.
For the most part, the Irish ethnicity is Gaelic, a group of ethnolinguistic Celtic families. However, the island was also influenced by Romans, as well as invaded by the Vikings, the English, and a Viking-English-French mixture called the Normans.
Irish People Have a Unique Mix of Ancestry
Bell-Beaker-Culture Peoples. Gaels/Celts (German) Roman (Italian) Vikings (Norwegian/Germanic)
There is no definitive figure of the total number of Australians with an Irish background. At the 2021 Australian census, 2,410,833 residents identified themselves as having Irish ancestry either alone or in combination with another ancestry.
The researchers expected to see differences from south to north and from east to west, similar to how lineages are organized in Europe and the U.K. more broadly. But in Ireland, genetic signatures are clustered very strongly with the four ancient kingdoms of Connacht, Leinster, Munster, and Ulster.
The Irish have Viking and Norman ancestry in similar proportions to the English. A comprehensive DNA map of the Irish has for the first time revealed lasting contributions from British, Scandinavian, and French invasions.
By examining the remaining genetic information, we have shown that there is indeed a small but noticeable legacy of Viking influence in Ireland.” The researchers also looked at Irish genetics in the context of Britain and found additional signals of migration between the two islands.
Scotland and Ireland are close neighbours, and it is no surprise that commercial ancestral Y-DNA testing and the resulting hundreds of Y-DNA Case Studies conducted at Scottish and Irish Origenes have revealed lots of shared ancestry among males with Scottish or Irish origins.
The earliest confirmed inhabitants of Ireland were Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, who arrived sometime around 7900 BC.
While people from Ireland, Britain, or Scotland tend to be genetically similar, genetic clusters show that even within countries, there are distinct regional differences, and this update captures some of that.
She said the hunter-gatherer Irish not only had dark skin, but also bright blue eyes – a combination rarely seen today. They operated mostly along the coast of the Burren gathering shellfish, and then moving inland to hunt wild boar and gather hazelnuts.
Ancestors of stone-age Irish farmers originated from the 'Fertile Crescent' agricultural region of the Middle East (which includes modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and northern Egypt) bringing with them cattle, cereals, ceramics, and genetic predisposition towards black hair and brown eyes, the Guardian ...
Irish is a Celtic language (as English is a Germanic language, French a Romance language, and so on). This means that it is a member of the Celtic family of languages. Its “sister” languages are Scottish, Gaelic, and Manx (Isle of Man); its more distant “cousins” are Welsh, Breton, and Cornish.
More than half the population of Ireland have blue eyes, according to a new study. That figure is higher than any other country on the Irish and British isles. The research was carried out in 2014 by ScotlandsDNA and also revealed that blue is the most common eye colour on the two islands.
O'Cleary or O'Clery (Irish: Ó Cléirigh) is the surname of a learned Gaelic Irish family. It is the oldest recorded surname in Europe — dating back to 916 CE — and is cognate with cleric and clerk. The O'Clearys are a sept of the Uí Fiachrach dynasty, who ruled the Kingdom of Connacht for nearly two millennia.
Scots have more Nordic DNA than the Irish. Scottish people are comprised of three types: 1) Gaelic or Highlander, which as same as Irish; 2) Low-Land Scot or English; and 3) northern Scots or Viking. Overall the DNA of Scotland and Ireland is similar but in certain regions they differ.
Even in Ireland, people aren't 100 percent Irish, according to O'Brien's doctor. "You will find that the most Irish-looking people are like 86 percent, 94 percent Irish.
5 – Norway
Due to the Viking invasion that began in the 8th century, Norwegian ancestry can be seen prominently in Irish DNA. Professor Gianpiero Cavalleri, who spearheaded a recent study on Irish genetics, explained the Viking's influence on Irish genes.
The area around Koroit has often been called the “beating heart of Australia's Irish heritage”, and the town was once in a shire called Belfast, although the town's name is from a Koroitch Gundidj word.
Indigenous Australians are descendants of the original inhabitants of the Australian continent. Their ancestors are believed to have migrated from Africa to Asia around 70,000 years ago and arrived in Australia around 50,000 years ago.
The Irish famine of the 1840s caused large numbers of people to migrate due to poverty and difficult living conditions. They worked in Victoria as whalers, fishermen and farm hands and in townships as labourers and factory workers. A few became property owners and professionals.